Halloween, Our Children and the Monsters Hidden in the Dark — Part One

After a difficult week, a long day and ten hours of driving, I returned home about an hour ago and wanted to write a few lines after a week's absence.

Tonight, in this corner of the world as in many other places, people celebrated Halloween. It is a strange and frightening celebration that most children enjoy and towards which many religious Christian families hold a strongly negative view.

For years I, too, did not have a positive view of this unconventional celebration. Watching people compete to appear more frightening, more repulsive, more suggestive of violence and death, and more disgusting, in a festival that at least on its surface appeared meaningless, gave me little to like. At the same time I did not want to impose this personal view on my young son, who eagerly prepared for the celebration each year. And so, beside my son, I too experienced Halloween—with considerable scepticism.

In the past I had experienced Halloween among adults, and perhaps that less than pleasant personal experience contributed greatly to my negative view of the celebration. But I must admit that over the past few years, experiencing Halloween alongside children created an entirely different feeling in me. I would like to share that feeling, and the conclusion I reached, in this piece.

I am not concerned here with the origins of the celebration, nor with its broader philosophy and meaning, nor with why committed Christian families strongly oppose it. I want only to consider the psychology of this celebration in the small world of children, and what led me not merely to develop a positive view of it but to celebrate it enthusiastically alongside my young son.

Children instinctively fear darkness, and they also fear the monsters they imagine are hidden within it. What do you say when your child tells you he is terrified of the dark? Or when he tells you he is afraid of monsters in the darkness? You might say that darkness is nothing to fear and is not dangerous. You might say there are no monsters in the dark. Do you really believe that?

Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist whose thought and work I greatly appreciate, might respond to such an answer by asking you in surprise and criticism: “Is that precisely why you have no fear of letting your child walk alone in the dark to the end of the street and back?”

The truth is that darkness is not equivalent to light, and darkness is frightening. Darkness is filled with the unknown, and the unknown may contain anything frightening. Fear of the unknown is not an unfamiliar feeling for us. Even as adults, many of us would refuse to enter the basement of a house in complete darkness, or an abandoned shed at the far end of a garden. Why are we afraid of darkness? The truth is that, in our hearts, we still believe in monsters hidden in the dark. In adulthood we may transform the frightening imaginary creature of childhood into a thief or dangerous murderer concealed in the night, or perhaps a wild animal hidden in darkness, but the roots of our fear remain. They are far more ancient and powerful than we imagine.

So perhaps it is better not to lie to our children. We should not tell them that darkness is not frightening, or that there are no monsters in it. A lie that even we do not believe in the depths of our own hearts will not make a child more courageous. Instead it may create an enduring sense of humiliation and guilt: a feeling of smallness and shame at being frightened by something that, according to adults, is not frightening at all; the feeling that not only am I cowardly, I cannot even overcome my fear—a supposedly irrational fear of something that adults say does not even exist.

As in many other difficult situations, the answer is not simple. It requires honesty, time and an answer children can understand. A better response might be something like this: “Darkness is frightening. You are not the only one who fears the dark and being alone in it, or who fills the empty darkness with monsters created by the mind. We all do this. But together we have the strength and courage to overcome this fear and step into the darkness. We even have the power to become the hero of our own story and overcome the monsters.”